UGA Beat Writer

Mark Richt bristled just a bit Wednesday at the suggestion that Georgia burned junior college transfer receiver Jonathon Rumph’s redshirt when it played him in the eighth game of the season against Florida.

“We don’t consider it burning his redshirt,” the Georgia coach said. “We consider that he’s been working towards getting ready to play. I would say if a guy was healthy his entire season and then all of a sudden you decided to play him for no good reason that would be burning a redshirt, but if you have a lot of injuries at a certain position or if a guy’s been injured himself and trying to get himself into position to play, I don’t really look at it that way.”

Rumph described the injury that he was battling as a “high hamstring injury, a partial tear.” He was fine with playing.

“I never thought about taking a redshirt,” he said. “I was basically doing what I had to do for my team.”

The 6-foot-5, 208-pound Rumph had two touchdown catches in the spring game, but in his debut against the Gators he said played about 10 snaps without a catch.

“When I got my chance to get on the field, I did play as hard as I could every snap,” Rumph said. “I was just so excited and happy to be out there. All the fans were out there, my parents, my friends, my cousins. I was ready to make a play.”

A hamstring injury kept him off the field before Saturday. He re-injured the hamstring in the September bye week, he said.

“Everybody kept me uplifted,” Rumph said. “The trainers kept me with the best treatment process I could do, and I just embraced it.”

Rumph, who said he’s working on his endurance and technique, said he still gets treatment twice a day.

OnlineAthens.com aims to foster constructive, respectful civic conversation. With your help, we will provide a friendly, safe, easy to use place on the Web for everyone in the area to share not only opinions but also information of community interest. Racist, harassing, abusive and libelous comments will not be tolerated.